On Thursday, March 10, the Space Shuttle Endeavour began its last 5 km trek to the launch pad.

When it launches on April 19 (scheduled at 19:48 EDT), Endeavour will bring parts and supplies to the International Space Station, as usual, but it will also be carrying the 7 ton the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2, a scientific instrument that, among many goals, will try to detect antimatter (to solve a long-standing puzzle of why so little exists in our Universe) and look for the subatomic signature of dark matter.

Regarding the AMS-2:
Given what we know about the CMB, this just sounds like an extremely odd sort of theory to be bothering about. Will this tell us interesting things about astrophysical processes that may produce antimatter? Maybe. Will it tell us interesting things about dark matter? Possibly.

But I’m pretty sure the matter/anti-matter asymmetry is a solved issue (in that it exists, not why it exists…yet). There is just no way for any noticeable amount of anti-matter to have survived the hot plasma of the early universe, which we observe as the CMB.

I am getting mixed feelings these days. I remember watching Neil Armstrong landing on moon and that big grin by Walter Cronkite, I still remember that literally like it was yesterday. I still have my Sunday newspaper extra from Milwaukee showing photos of the mission, and it is turning yellow on me. And I was stunned and angered when the shuttle program replaced Apollo. But now after 30 years of shuttle, they have kind of grown on me, and since endeavor is almost being put out to pasture , I am kind of sad.

I really wish they’d fly the shuttles now another 5 years, although I was initially against them. I hear they are working on the designs for a space plane so maybe that’ll get going. I really don’t like how congress and nasa work.

The shuttle program, a colassal waste of money, or so says Prof. Bob Park of the Un. of Maryland Physics Department. But of course, there are those in these parts who insist that Prof. Park, like Steven Weinberg, doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

3. DISCOVERY: THE EXPLORATION THAT REACHED NO OTHER SHORE.
The space shuttle Discovery returned its crew safely to Earth on Wednesday. Nothing more had been asked of it. A remarkable technological achievement, the shuttle program must nevertheless be judged a colossal failure. It was sold to Congress and the nation as a reusable spacecraft that would reduce costs; it turned out to be the most expensive launch system ever devised. The great achievements of the space program, including exploration of the solar system, space-based telescopes, weather satellites, space communications and global positioning all came out of the unmanned program.

Somehow, I feel like the Vikings who found the new world and then turned around and went home and burned their ships because they were too costly to maintain.
Sorry, but I am not at all convinced that any amount of x-prize will actually have any meaning. I much more expect we will simply do what the purveyors of ignorance would have us do, and burn our ships. I really hope I’m wrong.

F-35 is a sweet piece of machinery, though. I loves me some strike fighters. I always thought it should be a “flock” of aircraft, though.

Spacecraft versus military aircraft is a bit of a false dilemma, anyway.

And you think a significant move into space, along the lines of Von Braun’s original visions, wouldn’t rack up *many* trillions in costs? Hoisting things out of the gravity well is not cheap. It *seems* cheap because we’re not doing much right now.

Ah, the trials and tribulations of creating a Type I civilization.

We’re currently about a Type 0.7, and at least a century away from being Type I.

Somehow, I feel like the Vikings who found the new world and then turned around and went home and burned their ships because they were too costly to maintain.

Why? We’re in a bit of an uncertain/undecided state about how best to proceed, but no one is really suggesting complete abandonment of space. There’s quite a bit of effort in getting satellites to space cheaper, and the satcom industry at the very least is *never* going away, which is sort of why I selected it as a career. 😉

Cheer up. Think of it as Vikings who realized that their ships built of solid gold were not the best idea, and went back to the drawing board.

Or, go to college, get an appropriate degree, and invent a new way to orbit, because it’s *expensive* now. It’s not the lack of will or military budgets or anything else that’s really holding us back. We need a cheap way to orbit.

“3. DISCOVERY: THE EXPLORATION THAT REACHED NO OTHER SHORE.
The space shuttle Discovery returned its crew safely to Earth on Wednesday. Nothing more had been asked of it. A remarkable technological achievement, the shuttle program must nevertheless be judged a colossal failure. It was sold to Congress and the nation as a reusable spacecraft that would reduce costs; it turned out to be the most expensive launch system ever devised. The great achievements of the space program, including exploration of the solar system, space-based telescopes, weather satellites, space communications and global positioning all came out of the unmanned program.

I am a prof. also and agree with Dr. Park in general, always did, but I still am kind of bummed out that the manned space missions will end. I mean, there is more than science involved, it involves people and inspiration and some of those shuttle missions were pretty inspirational.

Dr. Park has this on the website:

Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew@bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author’s and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.

As a long time prof., I see the great humor in this. We ALWAYs want our schools to see eye to eye with us faculty, but they rarely do, and it is a sad thing. If we didn’t have tenure, I would worry about my job every day.